Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

There are simply too many things I want to talk about today but i don’t want to put up 15 posts like that today. So I’m going to steal the format of my 2nd favorite writer and start with something and then go where my mind takes me.

Am I actually reading Dee Dee Myers the press secretary to Bill Clinton go after Obama Mr. Favreau’s photo with a cutout? She is right of course but a tad late in the outrage department. There are some days when I think some people forget there are such things as youtube and videotape.

Captain Ed gives her a Captain Louis Renault award and rightly so, but I think Don Surber puts it best:

Groping a cardboard cutout is worse than cheating on your wife for 30+ years.

All I know is I have a job interview next week and if a picture like that of me came out before it it would be a real short one.

I’ve had time to watch some of my DVD’s since being laid off. I’ve been particularly watching the 50’s British show The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. It was my favorite show as a kid and when it was on at 6 a.m. on WMUR I always woke up on time. The quality of the writing holds up very well particularly against the new series which is a waste of space.

Since blacklisted writers including Ring Lardner Jr. were involved the quality isn’t a surprise. The irony is that watched 50 years it seems very politically incorrect, the Crusades as a noble endeavor and defensive war, and particularly the respect for the Catholic Church. I think that would make people like Lardner spin in their graves, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

You know people keep forgetting the Communism was the greatest killer of humanity of the 20th century, not Fascism, not Racism but Communism. It still kills today but people for some reason don’t want to admit it.

On that same subject it is the 75th anniversary of Stalin’s Terror Famine. Cathy Young writes about it here. the Volokh Conspiracy talks about it here.

Walter Duranty of the New York times wrote about it too back when it happened. He denied it in the pages of the New York Times winning a Pulitzer for it while acknowledging it privately. Some things never change.

I can’t think of the New York Times without thinking of my favorite writer Glenn Reynolds. Of course he is not a professional writer but a law professor who blogs for at Instapundit I am one of his many blog children. I never forget that when I started reading him in 2001 he used to have a quote on the top of his page saying “The New York Times of Bloggers.” I remember when he removed from his site thinking its absence enhanced his reputation.

The day the New York Times can call itself the Instapundit of Newspapers is the day its stock will not be tanking, its building will not need to be mortgaged and will be worth reading again.

BTW the link to the story above about the Times Stock Tanking is from 5 months ago, since that time when it “tanked” it has lost a further half of its value.

If you are a Doctor Who fan Rich’s Comix Blog should be your first stop on the next every day. His 10 doctors is on its 162th page as of this writing. The only problem with it is that i have to wait for more of his ancient Roman strip FVLMINATA.

If you are a Doctor Who or a Bugs Bunny fan you will love this, if you aren’t a doctor who fan you will likely not get it.

Since we are on British TV again one more thought about The Robin Hood Series. There are only a few episodes where the political message is blatant, but their politics are there. With older eyes you can see subtleties that are missed as a child. When you know what you are looking for it is easier to see.

It reminds me of something Bill James said about Joe Morgan in his first baseball abstract concerning base stealing and pitchouts. Apparently it never worked on Morgan because he would always notice something that gave it away, and when you noticed one thing you would notice others.

Oh and if you are baseball fan David Pinto’s blog Baseball musings should be a daily visit, particularly during the dark days of winter.

Speaking of baseball these are golden times for us Red Sox fans. Two world series and a contender every year. For us who remember the decades of disappointment we should be very grateful. But our children will never understand it.

Along those same lines. My mother was born in 1924 and is 84. My teenage sons were often babysat by her and have had first hand experience in depression era values. This has given them an advantage that their peers lack its one more debt to her I can never repay.

And finally when talking about debts that can’t be repaid; that 2nd favorite writer Jay Nordlinger whose Impromptus column is required reading at any time but his hour long interview with President Bush is incredible. An excerpt:

A word about popularity: You can be popular, but “at what price”? “You can get short-term popularity in the Middle East if you want, by blaming all problems on Israel. That’ll make you popular. You can be popular in certain salons of Europe if you say, ‘Okay, we’ll join the International Criminal Court.’ I could have been popular if I’d said, ‘Oh, Kyoto is the way to deal with the environmental problem.’ That would have made me liked. It would have made me wrong, however. And, ultimately, you earn people’s respect by articulating a set of principles and standing by them.

“You know, popularity comes and goes. It just does. It comes and goes for an individual or a nation [sing it, brother]. But principles are enduring.”

The president has been wrong on some big things (cough: bailouts cough:) but on a day when the big story is the attempted sale of the president elect vacant senate seat that message is important. It will be decades before we appreciate what we had.